The More Important, More Important Theory…
I kind of do several things at a time, but really I know I juggle them. It’s not really true multitasking. I’m not doing two or three or more things simultaneously. It’s more like I have a cluster of things going on and I jump from one to another, back and forth, randomly selecting which one to nudge next towards the finish line.
In the Title world I learned these skills very well in customer service. The phone would ring off the hook (as they use to say) and every client that called (especially Friday afternoons) was getting ready for a listing appointment that very day or the next and needed help with a profile, map, documents, comps, easements, height restictions, water rights, green belts, the owner of a vacant lot in back of their hopeful listing, CCR’s, a homebook, demographics, running out a metes and bounds legal description, etc. These projects of course were all urgent and everyone needed them NOW!
We busted booty to get it all done on time (and often the quickest way to get it to them was to fax it, how quaint in today’s world). It was maddening, stressful, exciting, and a great big adrenalin rush all at the same time. To survive, you quickly learned how to start all these projects, deal with countless interruptions, quickly gauge how involved each assignment would be, and as they rapidly stacked up you’d shuffle those projects like a Las Vegas card dealer works a deck of cards. All the while assessing who and what is more important more important. Don’t get me wrong, of course every client was my most important. Right?
But all projects don’t get finished at the same time. Somebody’s project is going to slide over the finish line first, then 2, 3, 4, 5… That’s just the way it works.
My brother Steve (also from the corporate world) aptly coined it…
The More Important, More Important Theory.
At any given point in time without warning (and several times a day at that) this is more important than that!
I stumbled on to this study in the New York Times Technology section. The article Gauging Your Distraction is about how drivers over estimate their ability to multitask behind the wheel.
They demonstrate it through a really cool little game… it’s simple and fun to play… take a look.
The multitasking challenges remind me of what those days were like back in customer service and now with social media and internet apps I alt tab my way through the day. It only takes about 15 minutes at my desk and I have 2 or 3 browers open on my laptop with anywhere from 4 to 7 tabs going, mean while on my PC (also on my desk), TweetDeck is running in the background along with Outlook, dictionary.com, picnik.com, Gmail and others…
Have Fun, but
don’t play this game while you’re driving…
Seriously, don’t!
How’d you do? Are you a multitasker?
2 years ago